Childe Rowland

Joseph Jacobs called the King of Elfland's palace "the Dark Tower" in his version, an addition he made that was not part of the original ballad.

"[2] The story tells of how the four children of the Queen (by some accounts Guinevere), Childe Rowland, his two older brothers, and his sister, Burd Ellen, were playing ball near a church.

Rowland went to Merlin to ask what became of his sister and was told that she was taken to the Dark Tower by the King of Elfland, and only the boldest knight in Christendom could retrieve her.

Merlin gave him his orders: he must chop off the head of anyone in Elfland who speaks to him until he sees his sister, and he must not eat or drink anything while in that realm.

Following the instructions, a door opened in the hill and Rowland entered a great hall, where sat Burd Ellen, under the spell of the King of Elfland.

Unlike the English Roland, the hero of the Danish ballads relies on trickery to rescue his sister, and in some versions they have an incestuous relationship.

[clarification needed] The story of Childe Roland is given prominence in Harper Lee's second book, Go Set a Watchman, in which 26-year-old "Scout" seeks to understand a Victorian scholar, her Uncle Jack, regarding the South's status in the 1950s.

In Book 2 of Seanan Mcguire's Indexing series, the prison used to hold rougue fairy tale characters is named Childe.